The Texas NAACP has drawn attention to problems with voting machines throughout the state. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and Texas State Conference of the NAACP just wrote a powerful letter to the Texas Secretary of State, Rolando B. Pablos, insisting that he protect the voting rights of all Texans after reports of ominous irregularities from voting machines throughout the state. "In the past week, we have received reports from individuals and voter advocacy groups that some Texas voters attempting to cast a straight-ticket ballot for the Democratic Party on Hart eSlate machines have seen their selection for U.S. Senator switch at the last moment to the candidate for the Republican Party," the NAACP and LDF wrote in their letter. "We have not received reports that this is happening to Texas voters attempting to cast a straight-ticket ballot for the Republican Party on these machines. But our request that your office do more on this issue is non-partisan and will protect all voters.

Kanye West, who once called Donald Trump his "brother," is now breaking from political talk, saying he was used as a pawn and that his "eyes are now wide open." On Oct. 30, Yeezus fired off a series of tweets, many of them breaking from Trump's beliefs. "My eyes are now wide open and now realize I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in," he wrote. "I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!"

President Trump says he can end birthright citizenship with an executive order. But most legal scholars — and even leaders of the president's own party — are skeptical. In an interview with Axios, published Tuesday, the president said he wants to end the automatic right to citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to noncitizens. "You can definitely do it with an act of Congress," Trump said in the Axios interview. "But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order."

President Donald Trump is tearing through constitutional norms again with his suggestion that he can remove the right to citizenship for children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants. Even if this idea goes nowhere and it is likely to go nowhere -- the Constitution's 14th Amendment 150 years ago conferred automatic citizenship to anyone born in the US, and the Supreme Court has upheld that birthright - the latest assertion reinforces a singular Trump message: The law is what he says it is. Trump has declared people innocent or guilty, based on his personal views. He has derided US judges for decisions with which he disagrees. He has swatted away fundamental notions of due process by calling for the death penalty of people before they were even formally tried in court. Now he appears to want to rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of his pen.-Donald J. Trump is a dictator he is trying to change our constitution using executive orders. Our constitution would be destroyed if the president is allowed to change using executive orders. Donald J. Trump (Wannabe dictator) cannot change our constitution, only congress can.

The "climate kids" were back on the steps of a federal courthouse in Oregon on Monday. But their case against the United States government, alleging violations of their constitutional rights to a safe and livable atmosphere in the face of runaway global warming, has dragged on for so long without a trial that some of them aren't exactly kids anymore. When the case was filed on their behalf in August 2015, Levi Draheim, the youngest plaintiff, was 8. Now he's 11. He's had to grow up considerably in those three years.

The Justice Department is investigating Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for possibly using his office for personal gain, following a referral from Interior's inspector general, two sources familiar with the investigation say. The full extent of the inquiry is unclear. Zinke has faced multiple ethics questions during his time at Interior, and the inspector general's office has multiple public inquiries into the secretary including the department's handling of a Connecticut casino project, whether the boundaries for Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument were redrawn to benefit a state lawmaker and conversations between Zinke and Halliburton Chairman David Lesar about a Montana land development project.

President Trump, seeking to limit immigration to the U.S., is set to challenge a 150-year-old constitutional standard that anyone born in America is an American citizen. Mr. Trump told "Axios on HBO" that he plans to sign an executive order to "remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on U.S.-soil." The 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, specifically says that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens." The Supreme Court has upheld this rule for legal permanent residents, but has never decided a citizenship case involving an illegal immigrant or a short-term visitor to the U.S. Amending the Constitution would require supermajorities in House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states.

A mourning family doesn’t want to meet him. Leaders of his own party declined to join him. The mayor has explicitly asked him not to come. And yet President Trump plans to visit this grief-stricken city Tuesday, amid accusations that he and his administration continue to fuel the anti-Semitism that inspired Saturday’s massacre inside a synagogue.

Susan Westwood is also facing four criminal summonses for communicating threats and simple assault, according to NBC affiliate WCNC. This month alone, a white man threatened a black campaign volunteer with what he said was a gun. Many white women went viral when they called police or threatened to call police on black people who had done nothing wrong. Another white woman went viral when she doubted a black man lived in her apartment complex. And a white man was shamed online after he made racist remarks to a black woman on a plane. A Charlotte, North Carolina, woman did all of these things in a seemingly drunken rant aimed at two black women, according to videos posted on Facebook Friday — and lost her job in the process.

Notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger was killed in a West Virginia prison Tuesday, sources told WBZ-TV I-Team chief correspondent Cheryl Fiandaca. He was 89 years old. Bulger had just been moved to USP Hazelton, a high-security prison with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Bruceton Mills.

Seven people were shot late Sunday evening at nightclub in Southern California, officials said. The Riverside Police Department received a call around 12:04 a.m. and responded to reports of a shooting inside and outside of Sevilla Nightclub. Online flyers show the Sevilla Nightclub had advertised a Halloween event called, “The Purge," seemingly in reference to the name of the horror film.

Here is a list of the deadliest single day mass shootings in US history from 1949 to the present. If the shooter was killed or committed suicide during the incident, that death is not included in the total.

Here's a look at rampage killings that have occurred in the United States since the 1940s. Includes incidents with four or more killed (not including the perpetrators). Not included are suicides, gang-related incidents or deaths resulting from domestic conflicts.

President Obama slams President Trump and the Republican Party with gloves off for "blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying" while campaigning Friday afternoon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: BARACK OBAMA: Look, listen. Throughout human history... Certainly throughout American history,...

The FBI was notified of a suspicious package at an Atlanta postal facility on Monday. CNN released a statement from its president, Jeff Zucker, saying that the package was addressed to CNN, which is headquartered in Atlanta. "There is no imminent danger to the CNN Center," Zucker said in the statement. CNN's New York bureau was targeted last week with two apparent mailed explosives, which authorities believe were part of a string of 14 suspicious packages sent to public figures and well-known Democrats across the country. On Friday, authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc for the mailed explosives and warned at the time that more such devices could already by in the postal system.

A white man who allegedly killed two people at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky tried to enter a predominantly black church nearby minutes before the fatal shooting, police said. The two people killed Wednesday -- Maurice Stallard and Vickie Jones -- were shot in the grocery store and the parking lot, respectively. CNN affiliate WDRB described both victims as black. Police arrested suspect Gregory A. Bush, 51, shortly after the shooting, which happened in the Louisville suburb of Jeffersontown.

Former President Barack Obama while campaigning Friday afternoon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: "In Washington they have racked up enough indictments to field a football team. Nobody in my administration got indicted. So, how is it that they cleaned things up?"

Donald Trump has once again branded the mainstream media the "enemy of the people", just days after a pipe bomb was sent to CNN's offices and 11 people were shot dead at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. "There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news," the US president wrote on Twitter. "The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly." - When Trump points a finger, two are pointing back at him. Trump lies the GOP and their alternative facts (more lies) are the true enemy of America and the America and people. Americans need to vote the Republicans out of power to save America.

European diplomats are warning that enhanced U.S. financial sanctions against Iran run the risk of forcing the rest of the world to create alternative banking systems that could undermine the long-time dominance of the U.S. dollar. The issue has come up as the Trump administration considers aggressive sanctions aimed at expelling Iran from the international banking system. As the deadline for sanctioning Iran’s oil industry approaches, the spotlight has shifted to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, an entity led by representatives of major banks from the world’s 10 largest economies that helps banks around the world communicate with each other on transactions. - Thanks to Trump’s destruction of the Iran, the world may turn against the US dollar, if that happens it will weaken America. America cannot be great if it is only great inside its borders.

California Rep. Adam Schiff on Sunday accused President Donald Trump of attempting to divide Americans with his rhetoric despite his condemnation of the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. "This President's modus operandi Is to divide us. ... It's not enough that a day on a tragedy he says the right words, if every other day of the year he's saying things to bring us into conflict with one another," Schiff told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday on "State of the Union."

In the world of right-wing conspiracy fans, the series of bombs sent to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN and other targets of President Donald Trump’s barbs is nothing more than a left-wing Democratic feint –– a false-flag operation designed to undermine Trump’s message. An outfit called Stranger Than Fiction News posted a video on its Facebook page Oct. 25. Over footage of a group of masked protestors burning an American flag, the post has the bold news headline "‘MAGA bomber’ identified as former CNN employee who donated to heavily to Hillary Clinton." (The video matches an antifa flag burning in Portland, Ore.)

Eleven people were killed in a shooting Saturday morning at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, according to officials.

Six people were wounded, Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said, four of whom were police officers who responded to the scene. No children were among the dead, he said. A city official have previously told CNN 10 people were killed. Law enforcement officials told CNN the suspect has been identified as 46-year-old Robert Bowers, and that the suspect made anti-Semitic statements during the shooting. Social media postings targeting Jews that are believed to have come from Bowers are a focus of the investigation, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Cesar Sayoc fancied himself a “foot soldier” for white supremacy and bigotry, and his van was his mobile manifesto. Stickers on the white vehicle depicted former President Barack Obama, a target of his suspected bomb deliveries, with an ape’s mask on his head. Others featured prominent Democrats with bull’s eyes superimposed on their faces. Inside the van, which served as the quiet man’s ideological canvass, Sayoc kept Barbie dolls with their heads missing, bottles of liquor and vitamins and dirty laundry. His former boss at a Fort Lauderdale pizza restaurant said Sayoc, who worked there as a delivery driver during the graveyard shift, would openly mock her for her sexuality and proclaim his love for Adolf Hitler and ethnic cleansing.

President Donald Trump has invited his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to visit Washington next year, US National Security Adviser John Bolton says. It is unclear if Mr Putin has accepted the invitation. The two leaders have met several times on the sidelines of international meetings but have held only one bilateral summit, in Helsinki in July. They are expected to meet briefly in Paris next month to mark the centenary of the end of World War One.What secrets will Trump give Putin this time?Let’s hope it is not the nuclear lunch codes.

In its coverage, CNN, whose president, Jeff Zucker, condemned Trump’s “continued attacks on the media,” has been critical of the statements made by Trump and White House officials, including press secretary Sarah Sanders, following the news of the pipe bombs. Trump and Sanders have publicly condemned the bombs, but they were both quick to accuse the “mainstream media” of exacerbating the country’s already divisive climate. Meanwhile, Fox News — a network known for its fawning coverage of Trump and propensity for reporting the news differently from other outlets — adopted a similar stance. On Wednesday, hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham all lobbed criticisms at Democrats and the media.

CNN anchor Poppy Harlow said Thursday that President Trump's attacks on the media are "unacceptable" in the wake of a series of bombs mailed to the network's offices and prominent Democratic officials. "To be attacked by the president last night and again this morning, it’s unacceptable," Harlow told The Hollywood Reporter. "But I think the most powerful response that we all as journalists have is to go on the air and do our job," she added.

After 12 potential explosive devices were mailed to prominent Democrats, law enforcement authorities Friday continue to search post offices after warning the public that more packages could still be at large. "This has to be taken with the most seriousness," New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill told reporters at a Thursday news conference when asked to address claims that the mailings were part of a hoax. "We are treating them as suspected explosive devices." So far, none of the suspected packages have injured anyone.

Caitlyn Jenner says she made a "mistake" in thinking she could work with President Donald Trump to benefit the LGBTQ community and is now no longer a Trump supporter. In a Washington Post op-ed published Thursday, Jenner said at first she believed she could work with Trump and Republicans to change the party's stance on LGBQT issues. "Sadly, I was wrong," Jenner wrote, adding, "The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president." She argued that Trump "has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community." "Believing that I could work with Trump and his administration to support our community was a mistake," Jenner wrote.

Federal authorities have arrested key members of a Southern California white-power group, the latest move in an ongoing effort by authorities to break the back of an organization linked to racism-fueled violence. Robert Rundo, leader of the so-called Rise Above Movement, was taken into custody Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. Two others — Tyler Laube and Robert Boman — were arrested Wednesday morning in connection with organizing and participating in riots, according to federal authorities. Another, Aaron Eason, was charged but remains at large, they said. All four were charged with traveling to incite or participate in riots, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Oops. On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump tweeted a video of then-Sen. Barack Obama arguing against open borders in 2005. “We are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law,” Obama says in the clip. “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.” Trump tweeted, “I agree with President Obama 100%!”

Yes Trump is a white nationalist remember when he defended his white nationalist buddies after Charlottesville as good people. Trump is lying as usual when he says he never heard the term white nationalist.

Suspicious packages sent to Obama, Clinton and CNN. Suspected explosive devices were sent to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US President Barack Obama, the US Secret Service has said. It comes two days after a bomb was found at the home of liberal philanthropist and financierGeorge Soros.

Federal authorities believe that an explosive device found Monday in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has been a focus of right-wing vitriol and conspiracy theorists, was left there by someone and was not delivered by the Postal Service, several law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

This has been the year of the TV remake: reboots of “Charmed” and “Magnum P.I.,” revivals of “Murphy Brown” and “Roseanne.” So maybe it should not be surprising to find Fox News remaking a hit from 2014: “Terror at the Border,” with a significant role for one Donald J. Trump. For viewers who forgot the original, here’s a brief recap. In the fall of 2014, with the midterms approaching, Fox and other conservative media went in overdrive on the “border crisis” and ISIS — two issues that Republicans were using to suggest that the Obama administration was failing to protect America from teeming hordes. As the election approached, the two stories merged into a single Frankenfear. According to the right-wing outlet Judicial Watch, terrorist organizations were poised on the Mexican border to sneak into the United States. Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, claimed to Fox’s Greta Van Susteren that 10 ISIS operatives had been apprehended crossing the border.

A woman flying from Houston to Albuquerque on Sunday had just settled into her seat and fallen asleep when she was awoken by an unwanted touch – a hand from behind her grabbing the right side of her breast. And the man authorities say is responsible allegedly cited President Trump’s past lewd language about women. Federal prosecutors allege the hand belonged to 49-year-old Bruce Michael Alexander from Tampa, another passenger on the Southwest Airlines flight, who reportedly told authorities after being arrested Sunday that “the President of the United States says it’s ok to grab women by their private parts,” according to a criminal complaint.

President Trump on Tuesday falsely accused “inept politicians” in Puerto Rico of seeking to use “ridiculously high” levels of hurricane relief funding to pay off debts that have left the U.S. commonwealth in bankruptcy. “The U.S. will NOT bail out long outstanding & unpaid obligations with hurricane relief money!” Trump said in a tweet that represented his latest salvo toward leaders of the island since it was ravaged by Hurricane Maria a little more than a year ago. In fact, neither Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló — or a federal board that oversees the territory’s finances — have argued that federal disaster relief funds should be used to directly pay off debts. Rosselló and other local leaders have actively advocated against such a move.

The Supreme Court on Monday shielded Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from answering lawyers’ questions in a lawsuit challenging his decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form. The government had asked the Supreme Court to block questioning of Ross as part of a lawsuit filed by several states, including New York, and civil rights groups. The groups are seeking to stop the administration from adding a citizenship question to the decennial count.

Donald Trump is waging one of the most inflammatory closing arguments of any modern campaign, lacing his midterm rhetoric with easily disprovable claims that are building on the fact-challenged foundation of his presidency. With just two weeks to go before the midterm election, the President is doing what he does best, seizing national attention with a flood of outrageous and improbable lies that drown out rivals, leverage his brawling personality and rip at fault lines of race, identity and patriotism.

The president has made several false and misleading claims about the Central American migrants travelling to the US border. Donald Trump is not hiding his ambition to conflate the caravan of around 7,000 migrants heading towards the US border with other issues in order to drum up support for Republicans in the forthcoming midterm elections.In his bid to make the caravan an election issue, Trump has made a number of false and misleading claims about the migrants that are travelling in it.

President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters with two weeks left until the Nov. 6 elections. Trump’s messaging — on display in his regular campaign rallies, tweets and press statements — largely avoids much talk of his achievements and instead offers an apocalyptic vision of the country, which he warns will only get worse if Democrats retake control of Congress.

A total of five members of the far-right men’s group Proud Boys have been arrested for beating up leftist protesters. The NYPD on Monday arrested three men affiliated with the far-right men’s organization Proud Boys in relation to the brutal fight that erupted in Manhattan after a speech by the group’s founder Gavin McInnes. A total of five men have been arrested following the incident between Proud Boys and far-left protesters on Oct. 12 that led to intense scrutiny over how the NYPD responded to brutality among extremists. On Monday, the NYPD announced the arrests of Irvin Antillon, 41, from Queens, New York, and Douglas Lennan, 40, from Northport, New York, who were both charged with riot and assault. A third man, Maxwell Hare, 26, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested and charged with gang assault, assault, riot, and criminal possession of a weapon.

When millions of people’s names were used to oppose — or in some cases, support —net neutrality without their permission, the FCC ignored it. But the investigation has taken a big turn. The New York Attorney General’s office has subpoenaed 14 organizations in its ongoing fraud investigation into who misused millions of people’s names and identifying information to file fake comments on the FCC’s proposal to kill the rules protecting net neutrality. The rules, which prevented internet providers from dictating the speed and quality of internet access, were repealed after the FCC offered a mandatory comment period in 2017 that gave people a chance to share their opinions about the proposed rollback of net neutrality.

Former Vice President Joe Biden took a swipe Saturday at President Donald Trump as the former vice president rallied Democrats in Las Vegas shortly before the President was set to hold a rally of his own a few hundred miles north of here in Elko. Rallying Democrats and union workers at an early vote rally, Biden said American values "are being shredded."

"They're being shredded by a President who's all about himself. It's all about Donald. It's not about anything else," Biden said at the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.

Well, Trump is partly right -- many of the people planning to vote against the GOP this election day are angry. But they aren't an "angry mob." They're "angry moms." And these outraged mothers appear ready to vote in big numbers for Democrats this midterm in order to send a message that they strongly disapprove of Trump. Just check out what women are telling us about the upcoming midterm election. A CNN poll released this month stunningly found that 63% said they would be voting for the Democratic candidate on November 6, compared to 33% who said they're more likely to vote for the Republican. If those numbers hold up, Democrats will see the biggest percentage of female voters casting ballots in the House race for them in midterm history! (Or at least since that data started being collected in 1976.)

The Florida city commissioner who confronted and shot an alleged shoplifter at a military surplus store earlier this month was charged with murder Friday. Michael Dunn, who serves as Lakeland's city commissioner for the Southwest district, was confronting a man police said had taken a hatchet from the store he owns when he shot and killed him. Surveillance footage from the incident, which took place Oct. 3, was released on Monday. Christobal Lopez, 50, was killed in the shooting.

Stone, Corsi, Smith reportedly fall under scrutiny. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is scrutinizing how a collection of activists and pundits intersected with WikiLeaks, the website that U.S. officials say was the primary conduit for publishing materials stolen by Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Mueller’s team has recently questioned witnesses about the activities of longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone, including his contacts with WikiLeaks, and has obtained telephone records, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for interfering in the upcoming Midterms. Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a whole host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control, and the NFL national anthem protests.The charges against Khusyaynova came just as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that it was concerned about “ongoing campaigns” by Russia, China and Iran to interfere with the upcoming Midterm elections and even the 2020 race — an ominous warning that comes just weeks before voters head to the polls.

During his 20 months in office, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has swept in perhaps the most dramatic political shift in memory at the Justice Department, from the civil rights-centered agenda of the Obama era to one that favors his hard-line conservative views on immigration, civil rights and social issues. Now, discontent and infighting have taken hold at the Justice Department, in part because Mr. Sessions was so determined to carry out that transformation that he ignored dissent, at times putting the Trump administration on track to lose in court and prompting high-level departures, according to interviews over several months with two dozen current and former career department lawyers who worked under Mr. Sessions. Most asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

Former President Jimmy Carter didn’t mince words while discussing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during a visit to Emory University on Thursday. The 39th president called Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the highest court in the land “a very serious mistake” while speaking to a civil rights class, The Emory Wheel first reported. Carter said he believed Kavanaugh lost “his cool” while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September. The then-federal appeals court judge drew intense criticism over his aggressive ― and at times, weepy ― denial of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her when they were both high school students. “Whether or not [Kavanaugh] attempted to rape a woman ... I thought he was temperamentally unfit to serve on the Supreme Court because of his outburst during the hearing.

Donald Trump is a piggish, unrepentant misogynist who has demonstrated that he thinks women are only as valuable as their physical appearance, a gutter perspective he made clear again when he called Stormy Daniels "horseface" on Twitter Tuesday. So why in the world would his opponents stoop to his level? That's what rapper T.I. did recently in a music video clip he tweeted, in which a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.'s pleasure after the President leaves the White House. The point was to stick it to the President. But the means was the same tool the President uses: Misogyny. T.I.'s message is fairly straightforward: Women are extensions of men, and it is humiliating for a man to have "his" woman stripping for someone else. Sexually objectifying Melania is a shortcut way of demeaning both her and her husban.

teve Penny, former president of USA Gymnastics, was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly tampering with evidence in the case of disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar. Penny was arrested by the U.S. Marshals service in Tennessee on a warrant issued by the state of Texas. He was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of tampering with evidence, a felony, on Sept. 28. He allegedly removed documents from the Karolyi Ranch, the U.S. gymnastics' training facility in Huntsville, Texas, related to Nassar's activity at the gym.

A senior Treasury Department employee was arrested this week and charged with leaking “highly sensitive information” about suspects in the high-profile investigation into Russia's meddling in the presidential election, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), allegedly "betrayed her position of trust” by leaking confidential banking reports on the Russian Embassy and suspects charged in special counsel Robert Muller’s Russian collusion probe, the government said in a statement. Federal prosecutors said Edwards, of Quinton, Virginia, provided a journalist with confidential material, including suspicious activity reports (SARs) on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and political consultant Rick Gates, according to the statement.

Newly published excerpts of jailhouse letters from U.S. Army officer-turned-terrorist Nidal Hasan show that he is almost completely without remorse for the 13 lives he took during the Fort Hood attack in 2009, the culmination of a twisted jihadist quest that he hoped would somehow save his mother’s soul.

Polls suggest GOP is at a disadvantage on the issue for the first time in years after their ACA repeal effort threatened coverage for pre-existing conditions. Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California backed the unsuccessful GOP effort last year to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

It’s not easy to pry the Trump name off a building, even when its residents want the president’s moniker removed. Nearly 70% of condominium owners in Trump Place voted to remove the giant metal letters from the Manhattan building’s east and west facades, the condo board informed residents in an email Oct. 17 obtained by the Washington Post.

Michael Cohen and his attorney met Wednesday with a group of state and federal law enforcement officials investigating various aspects of President Donald Trump's family business and charitable organization, according to people familiar with the meeting. CNN observed Cohen leaving Petrillo's office building Wednesday afternoon. Assistant US Attorney Tom McKay, the lead prosecutor on the Cohen case, had entered the building earlier in the day. The purpose of the meeting wasn't immediately clear, but both offices are continuing to investigate cases that relate to Trump entities and with which Cohen had professional involvement.

White woman apologizes after alleging black child assaulted her in store. With tears streaming down his cheeks, a 9-year-old black child spoke out at a community meeting in New York about being wrongly accused of grabbing a white woman's backside in a corner store -- an incident disproved by security-camera footage. With his mother standing beside him, Jeremiah Hervey delivered a simple message at the community meeting: "Friendship is really the key."

One of America’s worst senators, Lindsey Graham, stopped by Fox News’ morning gabfest Fox & Friends for a hard-hitting interview on Tuesday morning, in which he said he’s planning a Donald Trump-style publicity stunt where he takes his own DNA test and apparently reveals the results on the show. Then he couldn’t help but get (even more) racist!

The NYPD ignored multiple emails from BuzzFeed News asking why the "Proud Boys" members were not arrested for the violent assault. The far-right men’s organization “Proud Boys” violently beat two or three apparent protesters Friday night following a Republican event in Manhattan. About 30 members of the group — who describe themselves as "Western chauvinists" and have frequently aligned themselves with avowed neo-Nazis — participated in the beating, some screaming threats and slurs at the individuals, according to video and an eyewitness account.Although New York Police Department officers were present at the time of the attack, none of the Proud Boys were arrested for the beatdown. However, separately, three other protesters were arrested for attacking a person leaving the event.

A former Senate aide who became the focus of a leak investigation entered a guilty plea on Monday to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with reporters. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe, 57, admitted to a single felony count of making a false statement in the course of a federal investigation.

A Tennessee man lost one of his legs after his son, trying to fend off the 76-year-old’s chainsaw attack, drove over the older man with a lawn mower, according to the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office. The father, identified as Douglas Ferguson, of Bristol, now faces a charge of attempted second degree murder, according to the Bristol Herald Courier.

President Donald Trump claims he "didn't say" that he would pay $1 million to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren for taking DNA test to review her Native American heritage, after she released the results of one on Monday morning. "Who cares?" Trump said when asked about the DNA test. When pressed on the once-promised $1 million payment, Trump responded: "I didn't say that. You better read it again." In fact, Trump did promise $1 million, during a July rally, but only if the test showed she was "an Indian."

In a rather unusual campaign move, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released the results of a DNA test that she says provides "strong evidence" of Native American ancestry dating back six to 10 generations, addressing a controversy that has followed her for years. The results were part of an elaborate strategy to end questions about her ancestry, possibly in anticipation of a 2020 presidential bid. In addition to the DNA analysis that fit with family stories, Warren also released a campaign-style video with clips of President Trump mocking her and vignettes from her family history.

After two weeks of investigation, Facebook announced additional details on Friday of how attackers carried out a massive breach of the social network that compromised accounts for tens of millions of users. The company downgraded its estimate of how many users had their access tokens stolen from an original estimate of at least 50 million to 30 million—and shed new light on exactly how an attack of this magnitude happened in the first place.

"I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them. #failing@nytimes" -- Donald J. Trump, via Twitter, Oct. 2, 2016. The never-sleeping folk at the not-yet-failed New York Times on the Trump tax beat are at it again, this time with a lengthy expose on how Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, likely paid no taxes from 2009 until 2016, at least.

Federal prosecutors on Friday confirmed an ongoing grand jury investigation related to Michael Cohen, the president's former attorney and fixer. The revelation came in a response to a request in a letter sent by the New York Times to Judge William Pauley III, who is presiding over the case in New York's Southern District. The Times requested Thursday that Pauley unseal materials related to the raids done on Cohen's home, hotel and office earlier this year before he pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts.

Proud Boys — a misogynistic and anti-Muslim proto-fascist group — pummeled anti-fascist protesters outside a Proud Boys event at a New York Republican club. Minutes after an event at a Manhattan Republican club meant to celebrate violence against leftists, attendees belonging to a proto-fascist, pro-Trump street gang reportedly pummeled three people on the sidewalk in Manhattan’s Upper East Side while shouting homophobic slurs. Footage posted online by video journalist Sandi Bachom shows a group of men who appear to be Proud Boys — a misogynistic and anti-Muslim fraternity known for committing acts of political violence across the country — kicking and punching three apparent anti-fascist protesters as they lay prone on the sidewalk. “Do you feel brave now, faggot?” one of the attackers yelled, according to Bachom and another journalist, photographer Shay Horse. Another video shows multiple attackers yelling “faggot.”

John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, "got into a physical altercation" with a Chinese official during President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Kelly reportedly told colleagues he would not accept an apology from the official unless it occurred under a US flag in Washington, DC. Relations between Washington and Beijing are tense as Trump spars with the Chinese government over trade and other issues. The official was reportedly attempting to access the nuclear football, a 45-pound aluminum briefcase that's always by the president's side, carried by a military aide. It contains information and instructions for the president on how to conduct a nuclear strike.

One major goal of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is to send more US-made products there than Chinese companies export here. But so far it looks like that plan isn’t working — and it could become politically costly for Trump. America’s trade deficit with China reached a new high — $34.1 billion — in September. That’s a 13 percent increase compared to last year and is the second-straight record month after a deficit of $31 billion in August. That takes America’s trade deficit with China for the year to $225.8 billion — about $30 billion more than at the same point in 2017.

If Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller isn't observing a de jure "quiet period" ahead of the Nov. 6 election, he is observing one de facto. Notwithstanding a lot of noise about the prospect for more indictments or other action, Mueller so far hasn't delivered. That suggests that Washington, D.C., may be passing through the eye of the Russia imbroglio and will continue to experience a comparative calm until the arrival of the opposite inner wall of the storm, possibly after Election Day in less than a month.

President Trump’s son-in-law, appears to have dramatically reduced his tax bills in recent years by using a legal tax break known as depreciation, according to The New York Times. Kushner is worth more than $300 million and has earned millions off his family’s real-estate holdings but has paid little in taxes, The Times reported Saturday after obtaining confidential financial documents. The report concluded that he appeared to have paid almost no federal income taxes for several years running. .

More Americans oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation than support it, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Friday. The poll showed that 41 percent of Americans support his confirmation while 51 percent oppose it

Everyone’s DNA sequence is unique. But for those who wish to maintain their genetic privacy, it may not be unique enough. A new study argues that more than half of Americans could be identified by name if all you had to start with was a sample of their DNA and a few basic facts, such as the region where they live and about how old they might be. It wouldn’t be simple, and it wouldn’t be cheap. But the fact that it has become doable will force all of us to rethink the meaning of privacy in the DNA age, experts said.

A coalition of advocacy groups has launched a lawsuit to block Georgia from enforcing a practice critics say endangers the votes of more than 50,000 people in November and potentially larger numbers headed into the 2020 presidential election cycle. The Campaign Legal Center and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argued in the suit, which was filed in a federal district court on Thursday, that the state's "exact match" requirement violates the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Over the course of 12 months, the U.S. Army discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees who were recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service, The Associated Press has found. The decade-old Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruiting program, or "MAVNI," was put on hold in 2016 amid concerns that immigrant recruits were not being screened sufficiently. The Army began booting out those enlistees last year without explanation. The AP has interviewed more than a dozen recruits from countries such as Brazil, Pakistan, Iran, China and Mongolia who all said they were devastated by their unexpected discharges or canceled contracts.

An admission by the Justice Department is renewing questions about whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Congress the truth about the controversial citizenship question on the 2020 census. Steve Bannon, who was at the time a top adviser to President Donald Trump, contacted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in the spring of 2017 and asked him to talk with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led the administration's review of alleged voter fraud, about including a citizenship question on the census, according to a court filing. Ross, however, told Congress a different story at two congressional hearings in March 2018.

An autopsy report says a black man killed by a white Tennessee police officer died from three gunshot wounds that hit him from behind. The Tennessean cited the report that calls 25-year-old Daniel Hambrick's death a homicide and says he was hit twice in the back and once in the back of the head.

Obamacare coverage is about to get slightly more affordable for some Americans, and the Trump administration is already taking credit where none is due. First, the good news: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officially reported Thursday that the benchmark silver plans sold on HealthCare.gov will cost 1.5 percent less on average in 2019, compared to this year. What’s more, after years of insurers fleeing exchanges, a number of them are coming back to sell plans and compete. Premiums are only dipping now, on average, because Trump drove them ridiculously high in the first place. After failing to kill the Affordable Care Act outright, the administration took a number of steps to gut the exchanges—from killing key subsidies for insurers to repealing the individual mandate to expanding the availability of cheap, temporary insurance plans that will likely draw healthy customers out of the Obamacare customer pool. In response to these moves, carriers jacked up their premiums last year. It turns out, though, that many of them may have raised rates more than they needed to. As the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Cynthia Cox explained on Twitter today, “Individual market insurers are currently so profitable it would be hard for many companies to justify a rate increase.”

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams' campaign is calling on Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp to resign following a report his office is using a controversial verification law to effectively suppress the minority vote in their race to become the state's next governor. The demand from the Abrams campaign comes in response to an Associated Press report on records it obtained showing Georgia has put a hold on more than 53,000 voter registration applications -- nearly seven-in-ten of them belonging to African Americans -- because they failed to clear the state's "exact match" standard. Under the policy, even the most minor discrepancy -- like a typo or missing letter -- between a voter's registration and their drivers license, social security or state ID cards can be flagged. "As he has done for years, Brian Kemp is maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters -- the majority of them people of color," Abrams spokeswoman Abigail Collazo said in a statement.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr isn't ready to conclude there's been no collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia. Trump has been repeatedly citing the North Carolina Republican to make his case that no collusion occurred during the 2016 election, from Twitter to Fox News interviews to the Oval Office. But Burr told CNN on Thursday that while the President is right that his committee has found no "hard evidence" of collusion, the investigation isn't over.

The stomach-churning market scare continues. The Dow tumbled 546 points, or 2.1%, on Thursday following another rollercoaster session. The index briefly turned positive during morning trading before succumbing to heavy selling pressure. At one point the Dow was down 699 points. The Dow has shed 1,378 points over the past two days. The mood on Wall Street was only slightly calmer than Wednesday's 832-point nosedive. The S&P 500 closed down 2.1%, notching its sixth-straight losing session. It's the longest slump for the broad index since just prior to President Donald Trump's election more than two years ago.

In an extended soliloquy that touched on racism, tax breaks, prison reform, mental health and the need for art programs in schools, Kanye West, the at times controversial rapper-turned-prison reform activist, used his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday to offer a platform on issues he feels are most important to the African American community.

“Enough is enough,” the former first lady said while discussing the need for women’s equality. Former first lady Michelle Obama said Thursday that she is not satisfied with the progress that has been made since the Me Too movement began last year. “I’m surprised at how much has changed but how much has not changed,” she said on “Today” while discussing the cultural movement to end sexual violence. “I think that’s where the fire is coming from. Enough is enough,” Obama added. “The world is a sadly dangerous place for women and girls and we see that again and again.” Obama sat down with Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on the International Day of The Girl, which the United Nations introduced in 2012 to celebrate and empower girls around the world. “I think young women are tired of it, they’re tired of being undervalued, they’re tired of being disregarded, they’re tired of their voices not being invested in and heard,” she said. “It’s not just around the world, that’s happening right here in this country. And if we’re going to change that we have to give them the tools and the skills through education to be able to lift those voices up.”

Another old Trump tweet isn’t aging well. Donald Trump held a fundraiser and rally on Wednesday, just hours after Hurricane Michael hit Florida as a deadly Category 4 storm and caused massive destruction. “I cannot disappoint the thousands of people that are there ― and the thousands that are going,” the president tweeted prior to the event. However, in 2012, Trump slammed President Barack Obama for campaigning two weeks after Hurricane Sandy: Yesterday Obama campaigned with JayZ & Springsteen while Hurricane Sandy victims across NY & NJ are still decimated by Sandy. Wrong! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012. There was at least one key difference: Obama and his 2012 rival, Mitt Romney, both suspended their campaigns as the storm hit. They resumed campaigning days later. Trump’s event in Florida took place mere hours after Hurricane Michael made landfall. Many have called out Trump for holding a campaign event on the day of the storm: Trump’s in Pennsylvania playing to the crowd while Florida gets its ass kicked. It’s like Bush overflying New Orleans after Katrina and calling it good. What a loser. — Stephen King(@StephenKing) October 11, 2018. I guess it’s cool tho if you’re in Erie, Pennsylvania, during a Florida hurricane because there are no celebrities there (aka, won’t attend)? https://t.co/jwhn7NqXCt — Shannon Fx Watts (@shannonrwatts) October 10, 2018

While the Republican leadership celebrates the seating of Brett Kavanaugh as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts yesterday requested the Tenth Circuit to review more than twelve ethics complaints that have been made against Kavanaugh. The complaints concern Kavanaugh’s behavior at the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27.

Hurricane Michael, a monstrous storm that made landfall Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 with top winds of 155 mph, became the strongest storm since Hurricane Camille in 1969 and the third most powerful ever on record to hit the U.S. A broad swath of the Southeast is affected, with about 20 million people under either a warning or a watch for the hurricane, flooding or tornadoes, said ABC News contributor Tom Bossert, former Homeland Security Adviser to President Donald Trump. Michael is the worst hurricane to hit the Florida Panhandle since the mid-1800s, the director of FEMA said. "Hurricane Michael is the worst storm that the Florida Panhandle has ever seen," Gov. Rick Scott said in a press conference Wednesday evening.

House Democrats will open an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct and perjury against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh if they win control of the House in November, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Friday. Speaking on the eve of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote this weekend, Mr. Nadler said that there was evidence that Senate Republicans and the F.B.I. had overseen a “whitewash” investigation of the allegations and that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was at stake. He sidestepped the issue of impeachment. “It is not something we are eager to do,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”

Stormy Daniels Says She “Prayed for Death” While Having Sex with Donald TrumpUnfortunately, for the last eight months, the question “What’s it like to have sex with Donald Trump?” has been at the forefront of American culture. On Tuesday night, the now-infamous porn star Stormy Daniels answered that question in graphic detail during a sit-down with Jimmy Kimmel (and Sarah Paulson, who was there too, for some reason). During the almost 10-minute long segment, Daniels discussed meeting Trump at his hotel room in the mid-2000s, spanking the future-president with a magazine, and praying “for death” while having sex with him. In one particularly memorable moment, Daniels picked out which mushroom most resembles Trump’s penis from a lineup of very orange fungi, because that’s just how 2018 rolls.

The Washington Post editorial board called for the U.S. Senate to vote against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a move it has not made since 1987. "Enough has been learned about his partisan instincts that we believe senators must vote 'no,'" The Post editorial board wrote in a new piece published Thursday night. "We do not say so lightly. We have not opposed a Supreme Court nominee, liberal or conservative, since Robert H. Bork in 1987." The editorial board went on to state its issues with Kavanaugh as a nominee, adding that one element of the saga over his potential confirmation has been forgotten among the sexual misconduct allegations he faces. "Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to ask for all the potentially relevant documents from his time serving in the George W. Bush White House," the board writes. "The reason was not principled but political: Though they had kept a Supreme Court seat vacant for most of 2016, they wanted to ram through Mr. Kavanaugh before this year’s midterm elections."

The New York Attorney General's office is urging a state court not to dismiss its lawsuit against President Trump's charitable foundation, saying the foundation has repeatedly violated state and federal laws.Attorney General Barbara Underwood said the Donald J. Trump Foundation "was a shell corporation that functioned as a checkbook from which the business entity known as the Trump Organization made payments." Underwood sued the foundation in June, saying it repeatedly solicited money from donors and then used it for campaign-related purposes, violating federal election law. The money was also used to benefit Trump' business interests, by settling legal claims against it, for example, Underwood said. Underwood also said that Trump's three oldest children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump — had exercised no real control over the foundation's activities, despite being nominal board members.

Kavanaugh should not serve on Supreme Court, retired justice saysRetired Justice John Paul Stevens said on Thursday he believed that Judge Brett Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Stevens, a lifelong Republican who stepped down from the high court in 2010, said during an event to retirees in Boca Raton, Fla., that Kavanaugh’s temperament during the hearing into allegations of sexual misconduct was not suited for the position. “I feel his performance in the hearings ultimately changed my mind,” Stevens said, according to The Palm Beach Post.

We were Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking buddies. We don’t think he should be confirmed.Charles Ludington, Lynne Brookes and Elizabeth Swisher attended Yale University from 1983 to 1987 with Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. We were college classmates and drinking buddies with Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. In the past week, all three of us decided separately to respond to questions from the media regarding Brett’s honesty, or lack thereof. In each of our cases, it was his public statements during a Fox News TV interview and his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that prompted us to speak out. We each asserted that Brett lied to the Senate by stating, under oath, that he never drank to the point of forgetting what he was doing. We said, unequivocally, that each of us, on numerous occasions, had seen Brett stumbling drunk to the point that it would be impossible for him to state with any degree of certainty that he remembered everything that he did when drunk.

Brett Kavanaugh just admitted he screwed upBrett M. Kavanaugh on Thursday took another highly unusual step for a Supreme Court nominee, authoring an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The op-ed notably comes as he’s widely expected to be confirmed to the court this weekend, but it’s an acknowledgment of something that didn’t particularly help his cause: his testimony last week. The anger and partisanship Kavanaugh displayed were noted instantly, and eventually they alienated swing-vote GOP Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), who said flatly that Kavanaugh’s testimony was “sharp and partisan” and added,"We can’t have that on the court." Kavanaugh’s op-ed represents tacit agreement on that point. He assures he’s an “independent” judge — despite having attacked Democrats as orchestrating a campaign against him on behalf of the Clintons — and concedes he was too “emotional.”

Ex-EPA chief: Trump will pollute your air and make you pay for itWith the Trump administration taking steps to roll back America's clean-cars standards, states are preparing for what is sure to be an epic legal battle over states' authority to protect their citizens from dangerous pollution. In the latest escalation in their fight against the Trump administration, California regulators have approved new measures to defend the state's vehicle emissions standards. We should all be rooting for these regulators. Since the election of Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been guided by appointed officials who have fundamentally failed to uphold its mission: to protect public health and the environment. From undermining and ignoring established science, to rolling back lifesaving public health protections, it's become abundantly clear that this administration has no intention of upholding the core mission of the EPA.

Stormy Daniels Fearing For My Safety ... No Selfies For You - Stormy Daniels is living in fear of Donald Trump supportersSo much so, the ex-porn star is banning everyone from taking selfies with her at her book signing. Stormy is signing copies of her book, "Full Disclosure," Thursday night at the Barnes & Noble at The Grove, and a selfie ban is in full effect. Stormy's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, tells TMZ ... she will have her normal security detail, and the selfie ban was put in place because of safety concerns. If you're dying for a pic with President Trump's nemesis, Barnes & Noble staffers will snap a photo with your phone ... but there will be a table between you and Stormy.

White Mom Says Maryland Clinic Refused To Treat Black DaughterSchoolteacher Karen Dresser says clinic employees didn’t believe she’s the child’s mother and demanded proof of guardianship. Karen Dresser is white. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is black. When the two showed up at an emergency clinic in Maryland last month, Dresser said, her daughter was denied treatment because staff members assumed they weren’t related. “At first, I was just numb. I was in disbelief, actually,” Dresser told WJLA News. “We are a family in every sense of the word.” Dresser, a 51-year-old schoolteacher, said her daughter, whom she adopted in 2007, had previously been treated at the Patient First urgent-care clinic in Waldorf. But when she took her daughter there on Sept. 19 with what they suspected was a broken finger, she said she was met with skepticism.

Latest Arrests Further Prove That the “Very Fine People” in Charlottesville Arrived With Intent to Create Mass Violence - Federal prosecutors in Virginia announced the arrest of four Southern California men on charges of conspiring to riot at the white-nationalist “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville on the weekend of Aug. 11, 2017. The four men are said to be members of a small, militia-like white supremacist group called the Rise Above Movement. In the affidavit submitted to justify their arrests, an FBI agent presents evidence that the group regularly meets for mixed-martial arts training that it has put into use by attacking perceived enemies at multiple public political events. In Charlottesville, video and photo footage appears to show members of the group attacking a member of the clergy, body-slamming and headbutting female counterprotesters, and punching a male counterprotester directly in the face without provocation.

The late night hosts had a field day with this information, including Stephen Colbert, who used his monologue on The Late Show to roast Trump for having received hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parents since age 3. "At one point Donald Trump was an extraordinarily wealthy toddler and today he still is that," Colbert said.

The Department of Justice is condemning a judge’s ruling that blocks the Trump administration from ending protections for 300,000 immigrants living and working in the United States. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary injunction Wednesday that bars the administration from ending a program that allowed people from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador to stay in the U.S. temporarily. The ruling comes in a lawsuit that contends the administration improperly changed the rules for the program out of racism.

In 1983, I was one of Brett Kavanaugh’s freshman roommates at Yale University. About two weeks ago I came forward to lend my support to my friend Deborah Ramirez, who says Brett sexually assaulted her at a party in a dorm suite. I did this because I believe Debbie. Now the FBI is investigating this incident. I am willing to speak with them about my experiences at Yale with both Debbie and Brett. I would tell them this: Brett Kavanaugh stood up under oath and lied about his drinking and about the meaning of words in his yearbook. He did so baldly, without hesitation or reservation. In his words and his behavior, Judge Kavanaugh has shown contempt for the truth, for the process, for the rule of law, and for accountability. His willingness to lie to avoid embarrassment throws doubt on his denials about the larger questions of sexual assault. In contrast, I cannot remember ever having a reason to distrust anything, large or small, that I have heard from Debbie.

Boom, collapses the biggest lie from the world's most accomplished liar, exploded by financial reports of funds funneled from his father that brought Donald Trump to wealth and fame and power. The New York Times decoded the truth from 100,000 documents: All told, Donald amassed $413 million in today's dollars by the feat of conception by Fred Trump, a genuinely successful developer who built vast stretches of Brooklyn and Queens. Not a "small loan of a million dollars," paid back with interest — the story Donald Trump told voters, selling himself as an accomplished businessman meriting the presidency. That was pure scammery, a skyline of cards, never before so definitively shown. And that's not half the scandal. Accounting acrobatics surrounding Fred's 1999 death suggest stratagems to evade gift and estate taxes by perhaps half a billion dollars. A key scheme ran payments for apartment supplies and improvements through a shell company at inflated prices, funneling funds to bank accounts for Donald and his siblings without crossing paths with the taxman. Under New York's rent regulations, the arrangement also enabled them to fatten rents for littler guys.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave an impassioned speech on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement on the Senate floor Wednesday night. Sasse also dropped a bombshell about where he stands on Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's second nominee to the Supreme Court. "I urged the president to nominate a different individual. I urged the president to nominate a woman," Sasse said. He recounted the experiences of two personal friends he said were raped, adding that the #MeToo movement has been "complicated," but also a "very good thing." Then Sasse turned back to Trump: "We all know that the president cannot lead us through this time."

President Trump may have committed his biggest strategic blunder vis a vis China during his first full week in office, when, with a quick signature, he withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, says top China expert Christopher Johnson. "The TPP was the way to get China to address a lot of what we're now trying to get them to address with tariffs," said Johnson, who was for years a senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, and who now holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It may be the biggest strategic mistake the United States has ever made," he said.

It's one thing to misleadingly frame Dr. Ford’s allegations as a case of “he said, she said.” It's something else to ignore what “he” actually said. Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona state prosecutor hired by the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct questioning during the Judge Brett Kavanaugh hearing on Sept. 27, has released a memo analyzing the sexual assault allegations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Mitchell concludes that no “reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee” and that the evidence was not “sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.” As former federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who prosecuted and supervised cases involving human and sex trafficking as well as child exploitation, we find her analysis to be incomplete and deeply flawed. As an initial matter, many questions exist about Mitchell’s claimed independence, including whether and how much she is being paid, and by whom; what Senate Republicans talked to her about before the hearing; and why she ceased asking questions shortly after Kavanaugh began testifyin.

Some wealthy patrons are steering clear of Trump properties, saying the country club experience is now ruined "by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs." The presidency has been bad for Donald Trump's finances, with his personal net worth falling from $4.5 billion to $3.1 billion over the past two years, according to the latest Forbes billionaires list. Trump dropped 138 spots to 259 on the Forbes 400, an annual measure of the richest people in the U.S. During that same period, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos rose to the top spot, with an estimated fortune 52 times greater than that of the president, at $160 billion. Forbes attributed the decline of Trump's fortune to three main factors: e-commerce eating into the value of Trump's real estate holdings, the intrusion of heightened security at Trump's resorts, and Trump's own over-reporting of the size of his penthouse.

Analysis: Maryanne Trump Barry, an inactive federal judge, is mentioned throughout the report, which uncovered questionable tax schemes. A detailed New York Times investigation published Tuesday implicates Trump family patriarch Fred Trump and his children in questionable tax schemes, including fraud, to increase the family fortune and possibly evade taxes. One Trump family member should be particularly concerned about the possibility of impeachment as a result of the revelations. And it's not the president. It's the judge. Maryanne Trump Barry, the sister of President Donald Trump, is a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, based in Philadelphia. In June 2011, the now 81-year-old Barry took senior status, a form of semi-retirement that still allows judges to hear and rule on cases. She then moved to inactive senior judge status in 2017, and does not appear on the court's online roster of judges.

President Donald Trump's family are once again in the spotlight, but this time it is his parents and siblings rather than his children. A New York Times' investigation says it has found evidence that Mr Trump's property mogul father Fred dodged millions of dollars in taxes with often dubious strategies that channelled his wealth to his five children. It also accuses Donald Trump and his siblings of "setting up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents" - accusations denied by Mr Trump's youngest brother, Robert. So what do we know of Fred, his wife Mary Anne and their five children - the fourth of whom is now president of the United States.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday that the United States would be terminating a 1955-era treaty of amity with Iran that regulates economic and consular ties between the two countries. Pompeo called it a move that was "39 years overdue." Ties between the two nations have been strained for decades but have come to a head since the Trump administration moved to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The administration has admonished Iran and the regime's leadership for its "malign behavior" and for pursuing nuclear ambitions.

Charles Ludington, a former Yale classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, says that Kavanaugh was not being truthful when recounting his relationship with alcohol during his college years to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Four U.S. Navy sailors have been accused of allegedly engaging in group sex with an underage girl on a naval base in Washington state and recording and photographing the incident, according to Navy charge sheets. The sailors will face a preliminary court hearing in two weeks that will determine whether they should face a court-martial. The four sailors alleged to be involved, who weren't identified, are all submariners attached to the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet based at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington.

Rampage killers plan, give off warning signs—and mostly get their guns legally. Every time another mass shooting takes place, we hear the same refrains: Something caused the killer to suddenly snap. He was undoubtedly mentally ill. No one who knew him could have seen it coming. But the reality of mass shootings in America is starkly different from these familiar misconceptions. Mass shooters don’t explode out of nowhere—they plan and prepare. Most have no diagnosable mental illness. And their attacks are almost always preceded by behaviors that stir apprehension in people close to them, possible warning signs that crop up over a lengthy period of time.

This is an article I never imagined myself writing, that I never wanted to write, that I wish I could not write. If I were a senator, I would not vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. These are words I write with no pleasure, but with deep sadness. Unlike many people who will read them with glee—as validating preexisting political, philosophical, or jurisprudential opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination—I have no hostility to or particular fear of conservative jurisprudence. I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so. I have also spent a substantial portion of my adult life defending the proposition that judicial nominees are entitled to a measure of decency from the Senate and that there should be norms of civility within a process that showed Kavanaugh none even before the current allegations arose.

There’s been a spate of violent far-right extremism since the 2016 election. Four days after a homemade bomb blew through the window of a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, in August 2017, Sebastian Gorka, then a national security aide to President Donald Trump, commented about the attack. Though the culprits were still unknown, Gorka suggested that the bombing may have been a “fake hate crime” ginned up by leftists. He also scoffed at journalists who had raised questions about right-wing domestic terrorism: “It’s this constant, ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t.”. Seven months later, federal prosecutors charged three suspects in the bombing. The accused, all white men who belonged to a militia group called the White Rabbit 3 Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters, allegedly hoped to “scare [Muslims] out of the country” by telling them, “You’re not welcome here—get the fuck out.” (The three were also charged for a failed bombing at an Illinois abortion provider.) About four months prior to the mosque attack, the alleged ringleader, a 47-year-old contractor named Michael Hari, had submitted a proposal to help build Trump’s border wall. Hari’s company pitched a “culturally significant” design that would “protect our way of life” and defend America’s “Anglo-Saxon heritage, Western culture, and English language.

Federal investigators found “significant threats” to detainees’ health and safety. Inside an immigration detention center in the desert outside Los Angeles, guards threw detainees into solitary confinement without hearings, routinely forced them into shackles, and cut off visits with family. Doctors signed off on medical assessments that never happened. Detainees were allowed to hang knotted sheets inside their cells, despite the facility’s extensive history of suicide attempts. And an extraction-happy dentist refused to fill cavities while suggesting detainees floss with threads pulled from their socks. These were just some of the conditions inside the Adelanto Detention Facility when federal inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security arrived for a surprise visit in May, according to a searing report released today by the DHS Office of the Inspector General.

Jeff Flake called the president’s comments ‘kind of appalling’ and Susan Collins told reporters it was ‘just plain wrong’ Donald Trump has been sharply condemned for mocking Dr Christine Blasey Ford – the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault – with two key Republicans who could determine if the federal judge is confirmed to the US supreme court calling the comments “appalling” and “just plain wrong”. Addressing a campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Trump cast doubt on Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh, his nominee for the US supreme court, attempted to rape her when the two were teenagers in the early 1980s. Trump mocks Christine Blasey Ford at Mississippi rally as supporters cheer.

The UN's top court ordered the United States Wednesday to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods for Iran in a stunning setback for US President Donald Trump. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague handed Iran a major victory, saying that the stinging economic sanctions put Iranian lives at risk. The ruling is likely to rile Trump, who reimposed the sanctions in May after pulling out of Iran's international nuclear deal to the dismay of his allies. But it was unclear whether the judgment will be anything more than symbolic, because both Washington and Tehran have ignored them in the past. The ICJ judges ruled that the sanctions on some goods breached a 1955 "Treaty of Amity" between Iran and the US that predates Iran's Islamic Revolution.

A 2015 clip of Brett Kavanaugh making a joke about the elite Maryland high school he attended has resurfaced at an inconvenient time for the Supreme Court nominee. Kavanaugh faces allegations of sexually assaulting a woman along with the help of a friend when they were all teenagers at a high school party. Kavanaugh and the friend, Mark Judge, attended Georgetown Prep. Kavanaugh and Judge are also accused of being involved in gang rapes at parties while they were in high school. In 2015, Kavanaugh joked that "We had a good saying that we've held firm to to this day as the dean was reminding me before the talk, which is what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. That's been a good thing for all of us."

The beachfront property was rented, the guests were invited and an ever-organized Brett M. Kavanaugh had some advice for the seven Georgetown Preparatory School classmates who would be joining him for the weeklong escapade. In a 1983 letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, the young Judge Kavanaugh warned his friends of the danger of eviction from an Ocean City, Md., condo. In a neatly written postscript, he added: Whoever arrived first at the condo should “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles...” More than three decades later, the elite, privileged high school world that Judge Kavanaugh inhabited is the focus of international attention. He has been accused of sexual assault during his time at Georgetown Prep — claims that have delayed, and threatened to derail, his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Judge Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

Four California men who allegedly shared white supremacist views and trained together on boxing and street-fighting techniques were arrested by federal authorities Tuesday on charges that they traveled to Virginia with the intent to incite a riot and commit violence at last year’s deadly far-right rallies in Charlottesville. Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, and Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, both of Redondo Beach; Michael Paul Miselis, 29, of Lawndale; and Cole Evan White, 24, of Clayton were to appear in federal court in Los Angeles late Tuesday, said Thomas Cullen, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. The four are all members of the so-called Rise Above Movement, a white supremacist group based in Southern California that espouses anti-Semitism, promotes “clean living” and meets regularly in public parks to train in physical fitness, including boxing and other street-fighting techniques, according to the affidavit. Last August, the four traveled to Charlottesville, the affidavit says, to join hundreds of other white nationalists at a rally organized by Richard Spencer, the high-profile leader of a white supremacist think tank, to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

New York state tax officials are investigating allegations detailed in an exhaustive New York Times investigation into Donald Trump and his family's business dealings. The Times reported that Trump and his family committed "instances of outright fraud" in order to transfer millions of dollars from the real estate empire of the president's father, Fred Trump, to his children without paying the appropriate taxes. "The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation," a spokesman from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said in an email to CNBC.

Donald J. Trump built a business empire and won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. “I built what I built myself,” the president has repeatedly said. But an investigation by The New York Times has revealed that Donald Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire. What’s more, much of this money came to Mr. Trump through dubious tax schemes he participated in during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, The Times found. In all, the president’s parents transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate on gifts and inheritances that was in place at the time. Helped by a variety of tax dodges, the Trumps paid $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax returns show.

The Times alleges that Trump set up a fake corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents. U.S. President Donald Trump engaged in tax schemes that included cases of outright fraud in which he and his siblings helped their parents dodge taxes, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The Times investigation, which a Trump lawyer said was inaccurate, showed Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate business, citing a “vast trove” of confidential tax return and financial records. The Times reported that much of that fortune came to Trump because he helped his parents evade taxes, setting up a fake corporation with his siblings to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents. During his presidential campaign, Trump promoted himself as a self-made real estate mogul who started out with only a “very small” loan from his businessman father, Fred Trump.” The Times said its findings were based on more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts. The records did not include Donald Trump’s personal tax returns.

The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s. President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day. Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

A new investigation by Esquire Magazine claims Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has an “explosive” political secret that involves cows, illegal immigrants and political hypocrisy. The article has the political world buzzing because it uncovers something we didn’t know about one of the most prominent and interesting members of Congress in the Trump era. Nunes is the head of the House Intelligence Committee, which leads Republicans' efforts to investigate Russian election interference. Nunes has been sharply criticized for carrying President Trump’s water to get out from under the Russia investigation. It’s especially jarring coming from a congressman once viewed as a moderate who eschewed conspiracy-based politics he’s now accused of helping propagate. The Nunes family farm is in Iowa, not California. This is the main secret. The Nunes family farm may employ undocumented immigrants.

The FBI's contact with Charles Ludington, a classmate of Brett Kavanaugh at Yale, is a new development in its background investigation. Charles Ludington, a classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at Yale University, will provide information to the FBI on Monday, he confirmed to NBC News. News of Ludington's involvement was first reported by The Washington Post, which said he planned to give a statement to the FBI at its field office in Raleigh, North Carolina, "detailing violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh in college." In a copy of his statement given to The Post, Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University, described Kavanaugh as a "belligerent and aggressive" drunk.

Even before Christine Blasey Ford delivered her controlled but explosive testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, college-educated white women like her represented a rising threat to Republican prospects in the November election. But Ford's detailed allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could allow Democrats to solidify an unprecedented advantage among those women, who represent one of the few steadily growing components of the white electorate. Coming even as many professional white women are already recoiling from President Donald Trump's definition of the Republican Party, and Democrats have nominated an unprecedented number of professional women for Congress, the collision between Kavanaugh and Ford -- a professional herself -- has the potential to reinforce a lasting shift in loyalties that could tip the partisan balance in white-collar suburbs around America. "College-educated white women have identified very strongly with Dr. Ford and relate to her as a person, and will be turned off by the angry diatribes of Brett Kavanaugh," says Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin. "This dynamic will likely further boost college-educated women's engagement in this election."

Kavanaugh said he “doesn’t have a specific recollection." Text messages indicate his team had a photograph. A new report from NBC indicates Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may not have told Republican Judiciary Committee staffers the truth on September 25 when he said he “doesn’t have a specific recollection” of attending a wedding in 1997 with Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate who has accused him of sexual assault. Text messages exchanged between two friends of Kavanaugh’s that were reviewed by NBC indicate “Brett’s team” was actually in possession of a photo of Kavanaugh and Ramirez taken at the wedding no later than September 22 — three days before the judge sat down to talk with Judiciary Committee staffers.

In the face of numerous allegations of sexual assault dating back to his high school and college years, all of which are said to have involved copious alcohol use, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has tried to push back on reports that make it seem as though he and his friends were frequently drunk and belligerent, claiming he was a well-behaved boy who simply liked (and still likes!) beer — a characterization that a mounting number of his classmates are calling inaccurate. Though he claimed during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of his female “feminist” friends from college sent him a text telling him that he’s a “good man,” a growing number of his former classmates are recalling harsher images of Kavanaugh: someone who was “belligerent,” “aggressive,” and “often drank to excess.” But when the New York Times revealed the four witnesses the FBI will question about the accusations against Kavanaugh, notably absent from the list were his former classmates who have contradicted the SCOTUS nominee’s testimony about his partying. This raises obvious concerns about how serious the investigation is being taken — and whose interests it is seeking to protect. Below, a list of every one of Kavanaugh’s former classmates who have called out his lies. “In denying the possibility that he ever blacked out from drinking, and in downplaying the degree and frequency of his drinking, Brett has not told the truth.” In a statement issued to the New York Times, Chad Ludington, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who claims they frequently drank together, said he is “deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale.”

President Donald Trump is deeply unpopular across the globe, holding the most negative rating among five world leaders, according to a new poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. A median of 70 percent of respondents across 25 countries said they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing – a significantly higher disapproval rating than the leaders of Germany, France and China. Only Russian President Vladimir Putin came close, with 62 percent of the poll’s respondents saying they did not trust the former KGB agent. It's not just Trump. Attitudes toward America are at historic lows around the world – from from Sweden to South Africa – with a median of 50 percent holding a favorable opinion of the U.S., compared to 43 percent who see the U.S. unfavorably. More people also say their own country’s diplomatic relationship with the U.S. has grown worse over the past year.